


[Fandom stats] Do genre shows produce more fanfic?

by toastystats (destinationtoast)



Series: Fandom Stats [26]
Category: Fandom - Fandom
Genre: Cross-Posted on Tumblr, Fanwork Research & Reference Guides, Meta, Nonfiction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-10
Updated: 2014-08-10
Packaged: 2019-09-13 10:22:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 776
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16890750
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/destinationtoast/pseuds/toastystats
Summary: A look at the number of fanworks for different genres of shows, as of 2014.





	[Fandom stats] Do genre shows produce more fanfic?

**Author's Note:**

> Originally [posted to Tumblr](http://destinationtoast.tumblr.com/post/94415046724/do-genre-shows-produce-more-fanfic-someone-i). Apologies for the low resolution images; I no longer have the larger originals. :'( If you click through to the raw data, you can see spreadsheet tabs that contain each of the charts much more clearly (though the labels aren't color coded).

**Do genre shows produce more fanfic?**

Someone (I forget who -- sorry! ) recently was pondering why dramas don't get as much fanfic as sci-fi and fantasy shows.  I wondered if this was true; I suspected it was, but I also thought maybe this was just due to what's popular on TV right now, or maybe AO3 was especially biased toward SF/F.  So, naturally, I did some stats. :)

**Choosing TV shows**

I wanted to look at recent popular shows (in part because AO3 hasn't been around too long, and in part because I wanted to test a hypothesis that fanfic amount correlates with viewership).  So I went looking for a list of recent popular shows.  I combined the top 50 shows from the [TV Guide top shows](http://www.tvguide.com/top-tv-shows) and the [EW top 50 most watched shows for 2013-2014](http://insidetv.ew.com/2014/05/23/top-50-most-watched-shows-2013-14/). (I don't understand the methodology behind the making of these lists; sorry.  There are obviously some popular TV shows with lively fandoms that did not make these lists.)  The EW list came with viewership numbers, which was handy for some analyses.  I removed duplicates and shows that ended almost immediately and/or hadn't been around at least a year.  I also removed all non-fiction shows (Sports, News, and Reality genres).

**Getting fanfic numbers**

I looked at the [AO3 TV Shows fandoms list](http://archiveofourown.org/media/TV%20Shows/fandoms) and [FFN TV fandoms list](https://www.fanfiction.net/tv/) and copied down the numbers listed next to the TV show names there.  

**Q1: Which genres of shows are most popular?**

Let's start by looking at the top 30 shows from the EW list (after I weeded out some, as described above), so we can sort by viewership numbers:

I've color coded by genre (consulting Wikipedia where I was uncertain; take these classifications with ample salt).  From this list, it looks like crime dramas/police procedurals (green) mostly top the list, followed by a mix of comedies (orange)  and non-genre dramas (red).  The popular sci-fi/fantasy (purple) and thrillers (pink) shows on this list tend to get fewer viewers.

(Note that a number of popular shows in the TV Guide top 50 are missing from this EW list; the TV Guide list also includes content from premium channels like HBO, for one thing.)

**Q2: Do sci-fi/fantasy shows produce more fanfic than dramas?**

First I looked at the total number of fanfic on AO3 and FFN combined, and found the 30 most fanfic-producing shows from the original list:

This list shows a much different genre preference than the list above, with crime dramas and SF/F topping the list, and most non-genre dramas toward the bottom.

But!  Some of these shows have been around a lot longer than others.  So instead, let's compare the yearly amount of fic produced by each fandom.  I divided AO3 and FFN totals by the number of years the show has been around.  In the case of AO3, I maxed out this number of years at 5, because AO3 only became available for posting in 2009 -- this is a bit dubious, because hardly anyone posted in 2009 and the archive has grown a lot every year since; and also because I just subtracted the year of the first airdate from 2014, so these are not very accurate numbers of years.  But let's say that this gives us a rough idea of how active each of these fandoms are on these two major archives:

Now we see an even stronger preference for producing fanfic for genre shows, and SF/F are at the top for most active.  

**Q3: do AO3 and FFN have different active fandoms?**

Let's look again at the most active TV fandoms from the above list (in terms of fanfic produced per year), but break it down by archive:

From these top 10 lists, it looks like AO3 may favor sci-fi and fantasy TV shows more than FFN does.

**Q4: Can you predict the amount of fanfic production from the show viewership?**

Not according to the EW data set, anyway:

There's no correlation here (R^2 = 0.001).  It looks the most popular shows in terms of viewerships (15M+) all have reasonably active fandoms (1K+ fics per year).  But there doesn't seem to be any other pattern among these popular TV shows.

**Final thoughts**

These results might not be too surprising to folks who've been in fandom longer or watching TV trends more carefully than I have.  :)  I'd love feedback if you spot anything errors or things I missed.

This doesn't actually get at the original, more interesting question of WHY these genres have the most active fandoms.  I look forward to discussion about that!

Here's the [raw data](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1xiyTgqvQQBp6BE2MyAeYsd8ekNVLEI3vbrWoJEjKaew/edit?usp=sharing) if you want to play with it.


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